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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Mon Feb 10, 2014 2:27 am    Post subject: Food Pantry Sim [quote]

Been thinking about this one for a while. Socionica is languishing on the "can't think of how to make it interesting" back burner, and my other game ideas have the same issue.

I've been thinking to make a pantry sim, something along the lines of Harvest Moon. The game will be impossible to win... it will only have positive and negative endings.

Some ideas I'm considering:
- Play until you die of old age
- Going around the community to collect supplies
- Working phones
- complex social dynamics influence demand and supply, including greed, economic conditions, political environs, religiosity.

The bottleneck is definitely the graphics. Small SNES-style sprites would do, but even those take a while.

The good thing is that the game itself probably wouldn't take more than a day to map and script.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 3:31 am    Post subject: [quote]

Hmm I'm thinking... neon.
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Hajo
Demon Hunter


Joined: 30 Sep 2003
Posts: 779
Location: Between chair and keyboard.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 3:18 pm    Post subject: Re: Food Pantry Sim [quote]

tcaudilllg wrote:
Been thinking about this one for a while. "can't think of how to make it interesting"


Many of my projects died because of that, too. I think this is the biggest challenge in game design, unless you are a natural born game design talent.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Sat Mar 08, 2014 1:49 am    Post subject: [quote]

The good news is that even if you don't have the "talent", you can still come up with something through good ol' contemplation. It's a mental activity, and is completely a matter of desire, not of strength or dexterity.

It seems to me this game cannot thrive on play alone... style is essential to maintaining interest.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 1:22 am    Post subject: [quote]

Starting to understand where I'm going with this.
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Hajo
Demon Hunter


Joined: 30 Sep 2003
Posts: 779
Location: Between chair and keyboard.

PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 9:56 am    Post subject: [quote]

I imagine a realtime strategy game with attacking flies, grubs, maggots, and the sneaky molds. At times with the evil overlords of mice and rats, or even racoons and monkeys.

Then, aging food, the need to sort out rotten food, and restoch with freh food. Quests to have certain amounts of items in stock at certain times. or quests to protect particularly volatile food for some time.

Should be a fun theme :)
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:15 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Actually I'm thinking of a system in which the protagonist's actions influence the development of multiple NPCs. I've got it all worked out... I'm just lacking the graphics.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 4:56 am    Post subject: [quote]

I need tiles to pull this off. I'm trying to think of what this place looks like.

I'm definitely going for a Harvest Moon setup: one town with several buildings. The question is the era. Retro? Contemporary? Modern? Futuristic? I'm thinking 90s. As far as size goes, I'm thinking this game has sprites that are probably 16x24 a la Final Fantasy. I can do pretty good with that size if I forgo the big hair used in Final Fantasy, giving the body plenty more development.
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Hajo
Demon Hunter


Joined: 30 Sep 2003
Posts: 779
Location: Between chair and keyboard.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 2:53 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Past and future usually are intersting for people, because they are different from what they see each day.

The 90s are still quite close to the present, and I'm not sure if there really changed a lot since the 90s. Or do you mean the 1890s? That's an interesting time in between the steam age and the modern times.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 2:33 am    Post subject: [quote]

Been doing graphics the past week. Made furniture and appliances for houses. Made house graphics. I'm thinking the town will consist of 30 people... need graphics now for them.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 12:14 am    Post subject: [quote]

This project is sucking out my soul. I never imagined that I'd not enjoy making a game like this so much. Thinking to cut down the months to seasons. But yeah I threw myself heart and soul into the tile art these past couple weeks. Still have the sprite art to do, and it's all still just 16x16 pixels per cell. UGH.

There are a couple of issues to confront:
#1: people who are impoverished can't much wear the latest fashions. This means they will be kinda behind the times in terms of (think thrift store garments from the 70s). Might cast attire worn by an NPC as reward for success in fighting hunger (if unsuccessful the NPCs stay poor and their clothing awkward or even ragged). Definitely, status improvements for the individuals aided by volunteering is the primary factor of reward in the work for those who do it.

I think I'm just gonna have the NPCs stay in the same places. That will make them significantly easier to draw.

Also the NPCs should make different lifestyle choices depending on their personality in the face of hunger, i.e. some should become prostitutes, some should become gangsters, drug dealers... others should simply persevere and endure, but not be able to make of themselves what they otherwise would. Also income levels should be factored in as to who gets hungry at what supply shortfalls.

There should also be windows in which people have opportunity, and depending on their hunger they might fail these opportunities.

#2. The game shouldn't be predictable. Random chance should permit one-off outlier situations, breaks from the pack. Random success even in the face of hardship.

Also I'm quitting the factor-8 palette. Moving instead to either a factor 12 1,700-color palette, or the factor 16 palette that was used by most systems of the 16 bit era (4000 colors). The breaker, for me, was sidewalks... I just didn't have enough grays to make a realistic gradient.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:15 am    Post subject: [quote]

Got the female sprites done... now the males.
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BadMrBox
Bringer of Apocalypse


Joined: 26 Jun 2002
Posts: 1022
Location: Dark Forest's of Sweden

PostPosted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 5:39 am    Post subject: [quote]

Quote:
This project is sucking out my soul. I never imagined that I'd not enjoy making a game like this so much.


That doesn't sound very fun man :(
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 12:03 am    Post subject: [quote]

I much prefer making maps to graphics, that's for sure.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Mon Apr 28, 2014 8:54 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Took time off from game making. Gonna give it another try.
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